How do I remove/delete a folder that is not empty?

Question

I am getting an 'access is denied' error when I attempt to delete a folder that is not empty. I used the following command in my attempt: os.remove("/folder_name").

What is the most effective way of removing/deleting a folder/directory that is not empty?

Answer 1

import shutil  shutil.rmtree('/folder_name') 

Standard Library Reference: shutil.rmtree.

By design, rmtree fails on folder trees containing read-only files. If you want the folder to be deleted regardless of whether it contains read-only files, then use

shutil.rmtree('/folder_name', ignore_errors=True) 

Answer 2

From the python docs on os.walk():

# Delete everything reachable from the directory named in 'top', # assuming there are no symbolic links. # CAUTION:  This is dangerous!  For example, if top == '/', it # could delete all your disk files. import os for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):     for name in files:         os.remove(os.path.join(root, name))     for name in dirs:         os.rmdir(os.path.join(root, name))